Keyboard shortcuts are a great timesaver when you’re spending hours typing away on your computer. I’ve just learned a couple of new ones, for inserting smart (curly) quotes in text where autoformat functions, such as Word’s, don’t work, and for doing the opposite: inserting straight quotes when you’re working in AutoFormat mode.

I discovered these tips when I was working (in Joomla) on the copy for my revamped website. I noticed that some of the quote marks I’d been inserting were straight, not curly and that I’d ended up with a sloppy-looking mish-mash of both types.

So I contacted Zoë, my web-designer, who told me some keyboard shortcuts to turn straight quotes into smart in programmes or environments where AutoFormat isn’t available, and how to insert straight quotes when necessary. I’d to go through each page of the website (which has a lot of quotes — from Aeschylus to Groucho Marx!) and change them all by hand. But at least they’re sorted (although a couple no doubt slipped through the net).

These shortcuts are for Macs, by the way, but PCs should have something similar.

Inserting smart quotes

First, to set up Word to insert smart quotes automatically, go to the Insert menu > Autotext > AutoFormat As You Type and, in the section under Replace as you type, check the box next to “Straight quotes” with “smart quotes”.

If you’re working in an application where AutoFormat doesn’t work, you can use the following shortcuts:

These shortcuts are also useful when you want to boss your programme around. For example, when you’re in AutoFormat mode, Word assumes that in a sentence like “The ‘80s were the decade of wide-shouldered power suits”, the single quote mark before 80s (as an abbreviation for 1980s) is opening a quote. So it makes the quote mark left-facing, when it should in fact be right-facing. But if you use the keyboard short-cut: shift+alt+left-facing curly bracket (}), you’ll get “the ’80s”.

Inserting straight quotes or prime marks

Sometimes you need to insert straight quotes rather than smart ones — when you’re using them as prime marks, say, to signify feet and inches or hours, minutes and seconds etc., like this: 5′ 6″ (5 feet and 6 inches (length), or 5 minutes and 6 seconds (time)). True prime marks are straight but slightly slanted, rather than vertical, but straight quotes do the job nicely.

To insert straight quotes when you’re working in curly-quote mode, type the single or double quote mark as required, then use the keyboard shortcut for “Undo”: command+z. That’ll turn the curly quote into a straight one and instead of 5’ 6”, you’ll get 5′ 6″. (In Word, I’d have expected it to remove the character I’d just typed, but no, it doesn’t. It does here in WordPress, though, as I’ve just discovered!).

As I mentioned above, these shortcuts are courtesy of the wonderful Zoë Shuttleworth of Rude Goose and are for use on a Mac. But other operating systems should have something similar — if you know of any, tell us about them in the comments. That goes for other keyboard shortcuts too — if you’ve got any you find particularly useful, we’d love to hear about them.